30 years after the real 'Cool Runnings,' Jamaican bobsled team
crowdfunds for a coach

Jamaica could win its first-ever medal in bobsled next year at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea — exactly 30 years after the Caribbean island nation improbably debuted in the sport at the 1988 Olympics, a tale later immortalized in the Hollywood classic Cool Runnings.

But there's just one problem: The Jamaican bobsled team needs a coach, and it has no money to hire one.

"Most of the time we just manage each other and try to hold each other accountable as much as possible," team member Jazmine Fenlator told Mashable by phone Tuesday. "But it's a lot simpler mentally and physically to have someone as a mentor and authoritative figure to keep you motivated as well."

Fenlator is a dual citizen of Jamaica and the U.S. who competed in bobsled for Team USA at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Now suiting up for Jamaica, she's taken an unofficial leadership role as one of the team's more experienced members.

But if Cool Runnings taught us one thing, it's that any bobsled team worth a damn needs John Candy a coach. With the 2018 Olympics just 13 months away, the team has turned to the internet.

Kathleen Pulito, the team's media coordinator, set up a donation page on the site GoFundMe last week. She told Mashable it's "technically possible" that Jamaica could qualify for the Olympics without a coach — but doing so would be difficult. With a coach, however, Pulito and Fenlator believe the team, and its two-person women's squad in particular, has a real shot to medal.

More progress is needed.

Image: gofundme

"It's hard when you're hearing things from a peer, as opposed to a coach you can trust and confide in," Fenlator said.

The crowdfunding campaign's target is $60,000. It's so far raised just over $1,000, a number the team obviously hopes will grow quickly.

"The winter sports are not well-funded," Pulito said. "Jamaica is known for its track and field, and that's where most of the resources go."

The team makeup, too, takes something of a cobbled-together form. On the women's side, Carrie Russell is better known as a track star for Jamaica. On the men's side, brakeman Michael Blair used to be an NFL running back. Most of the team has a track and field background of some sort.

This is not uncommon in bobsled, particularly women's bobsled. Nigeria's team, which recently attempted a crowdfunding campaign of its own, is made up of former track athletes. Hurdler Lolo Jones is perhaps the biggest name among athletes who've joined the U.S. women's team from other sports.

"The biggest key to making the transition successful is using to convert whatever athletic ability you have into making the sled go fast," Elana Meyers Taylor, a former college softball player and two-time Olympic medalist for Team USA in bobsled, told Mashable. "For some people, it means being as strong as possible. For others it means being as fast as possible. For me, coming from softball, I had to learn to train like a bobsledder, which is pretty much like a track athlete and an Olympic weightlifter."

Some members of the Jamaican team might need help getting up to speed on their new sport's finer points, and the squad could definitely use a boost on the financial side. But there's at least one area in which it needs no help.

"No matter where we go, it's everyone's second-favorite team," Pulito said. "They root for their home country, then it's Jamaica — or sometimes it's even the other way around."

Much of that affection and notoriety is thanks to the enduring popularity of Cool Runnings, the 1993 movie that told the story of Jamaica's groundbreaking 1988 bobsled team. Jamaica also qualified for the Olympics in bobsled in 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2014.

Now Fenlator and her teammates would love to commemorate the 1988 anniversary in style next February — with a medal.

"Thirty years later," she said, "it would be great to bring some hardware back to Jamaica."

But first things first. Before the team can seek a medal, it must find a coach.

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